Student Activism in the 1960s

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Student Activism in the 1960s
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I. Intro

• Student movement existed before the escalation in
  Vietnam
• Went through 3 phases
• Early 1960s
• Mid-1960s
• Late 1960s

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II. Origins of the New Left

• First noticed by the mass media in SF in 1960
  first mass demonstration in 20 years
• Triggered by HUAC special-hearing to investigate
  communism in Bay Area
• Film Operation Abolition
• About 1,000 UCB students protested

Police turned fire hoses on protestors
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• Signs of movement across the country
• 1962 come together to form Students for a
  Democratic Society (SDS)
• Port Huron Statement
• We are people of this generation, bred in at
  least modest comfort, housed now in universities,
  looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.
• When we were kids the United States was the
  wealthiest and strongest country in the world
  the only one with the atom bomb, the least
  scarred by modern war, an initiator of the United
  Nations that we thought would distribute Western
  influence throughout the world. Freedom and
  equality for each individual, government of, by,
  and for the people - these American values we
  found good, principles by which we could live as
  men. Many of us began maturing in complacency.

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• In a participatory democracy, the political life
  would be based in several root principles
  ...that politics be seen positively, as the art
  of collectively creating an acceptable pattern of
  social relations ...that politics has the
  function of bringing people out of isolation and
  into community, thus being a necessary, though
  not sufficient, means of finding meaning in
  personal life The economic sphere would have
  as its basis the principles ...that work should
  involve incentives worthier than money or
  survival. It should be educative, not
  stultifying creative, not mechanical
  self-directed, not manipulated, encouraging
  independence, a respect for others, a sense of
  dignity, and a willingness to accept social
  responsibility, since it is this experience that
  has crucial influence on habits, perceptions and
  individual ethics

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New Left

• Self-identified as New Left
• Liberals want to work within the system,
  implicitly accept system
• Leftists work outside system basic, radical
  change at root of system
• New not communist/USSR

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III. Impact of the CRM Berkeley, 1964

• 1963 Mario Savio and others protest discrim. in
  Bay Area (hotel hiring)? anger businesses
  (Oakland Tribune)? pressure UCB admin.? no
  discussion of outside issues on campus
• Free Speech Movement (FSM) to protest silencing
  unified wide range of groups (anti-apartheid,
  feminist, civil rights, anti-war, Youth for
  Goldwater)

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• Some radical tactics (civil disobedience, sit-ins
  in buildings) but moderate goals
• Gain support of faculty and force administration
  to give in to their demands

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• Attracted kooks to Berkeley who thought FSM was
  about violence, drugs, and a good time? hippies
  and Reagans the mess at Berkeley

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IV. Impact of Vietnam Columbia, 1968

• June 1965 threat of draft? student movement
  primarily about war
• Columbia, 1968 war research on campus
• Two issues
• 1) no more war research
• 2) racism of the university (property in Harlem)
• Saw two connected racist imperialism

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• Kill the brain of the monster
• How? Shut down the university? seize buildings,
  strike, shut down classes
• Mark Rudd

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Madison, WI (Berkeley of Mid West)

• Sep. 7, 1970 Okay pigs, now listen and listen
  good. There's a bomb in the Army Math Research
  Centerthe universityset to go off in five
  minutes. Clear the building. Warn the hospital.
  This is no bull, man.
• OK City style van w/fertilizer kills Physics
  grad students Madison anti-war movement
• Response to Kent State massacre

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V. Delegitimizing Protest Nixons Silent
Majority

• 1968 Democratic National Convention, Chicago
• Anti-war Protestors sought to enter Convention?
  beaten by police National Guard
• Images most rabid, unruly protestersinevitably
  focus television coveragebest possible
  Republican counter-spin (Pat Buchanan)
• 1968 race riots? Nixon law and order/silent
  majority victory, demise mainstream Left,
  seriously scars Democratic Party to today (Solid
  South, Dems soft on defense)

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Weather Underground

• SDS splinter